Catalyst
by ICanSeeYourFace
Summary: The world can change in three letters. Her no's were running out, and Jess's desperate voice had made it so easy to say yes. Rory decides to go with Jess when he asks her to run away with him. Two-parter. Lit.
1. Chapter 1: Yes

**A/N**: For the past week or so, I've been trying to scribble down an update for my Twilight-fic, _Prima Bellarina_. Unfortunately, it hasn't gone too well. Everytime I sit down and try to write, it all comes out Gilmore. This is how _Catalyst _came to be. I sat down, started jotting, and my mind started thinking what if Rory had gone with Jess that night at Yale. I have read a couple of stories where she says yes, but my mind still needed to set down that particular what if-scenario in words. This is a two-parter, and I've got part two ready. I'll do some last minute editing tomorrow and then post it. Until then, enjoy chapter one. Title based on the song "Catalyst" by the excruciatingly talented Anna Nalick.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Gilmore Girls, and I am not making any money off of this.

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Chapter one: Yes

_And you'd be inclined to be mine for the taking  
and part of this terrible mess that I'm making  
But you, you're the catalyst_

_- Anna Nalick_

The world can change in three letters, one syllable, shakily breathed out in a dark room. Life spins around in neat, concentric circles until it happens, an unscheduled pirouette of impulsivity. Her no's were running out, and Jess's desperate voice had just made it so easy to say yes. The atmosphere in the room shifted, as if someone had slammed on some imaginary breaks somewhere. Jess's frantic expression turned blank, and Rory's aggravation evaporated. Once again, her mind had made its decision before her body had had time to react. Jess waited quietly, anticipating her instant regret and the inevitable "Leave me alone".

It never came.

"You'd really come with me?" he asked, watching her reaction closely.

She sighed, looking around the almost empty room before settling on him.

"I should have followed you when you went to California," she uttered, then inclined her head, closing her eyes for a few seconds. "Okay, that's maybe a little bit insane, even for me. The point is, I shouldn't have let go of you as easily as I did." She opened her eyes and glanced at him. "I don't want to make the same mistake again.

"What about Dean?" Jess couldn't help but sneer Dean's name.

"Dean..." Rory bit her lip.

Dean was a virtual mine field, even on the best of days, and if she didn't tread lightly, this could all blow up in her face. How little could she tell Jess without still saying too much? Dean was, in some aspects a reason as to why she'd said yes, she realized. _"I mean, just look at what has happened to me lately..."_ Rory thought to herself. She was well on the way of becoming the "other woman", she had gone on a date with a guy her grandma set her up with, gotten stranded at a bar from which she was picked up by her high school ex-boyfriend. Her life been a chaos of concentric mess-ups lately.

"It's not Dean I'm saying yes to, is it?" Rory replied, opting for avoiding the subject of her involvement with Dean altogether.

To her relief, Jess accepted her answer. At least she interpreted his silence as acceptance. When he tentatively reached out his hand for her to take, she knew this was happening. She took it, surprised by the instant feeling of belonging that spread through her body. She looked over her shoulder. Three boxes. Three lonely boxes was all that was left now, everything else was packed away in her car, Dean waiting by it. Suddenly, Rory couldn't remember what was left in the boxes, but something told her to bring them along for the ride. She chucked one at Jess, and took the remaining two herself, her purse balancing dangerously on top.

They snuck out, locking the door behind them. Sneaking past Dean turned out to be much easier than expected. He wasn't waiting by the car anymore. Rory took it as another sight that this was meant to be. Together, they put the boxes in the trunk, and Jess revved up the engine. They both laughed at the anguished sounds the Rambler Ambassador made as they took off.

They raced down roads, fully content with not knowing where they were headed. The freedom was liberating, nothing keeping them to or from something. It was bliss, sleeping huddled together in the backseat of the crappy car with her belongings still packed in boxes. The first week held the same amount of excitement to Rory as a good book she read for the first time. It was new, fresh, unconventional at times, and she readily overlooked any negative sides because the good parts just had to come soon.

To Jess, running was running. He had long ago learned to separate facts from fiction. He let Rory keep her little delusions; this was something she had to destroy on her own, because only then would she see the truth behind her fantasies.

At times their reckless run seemed certifiably nuts. Who would voluntarily chose this... lifestyle, and their venture was fast becoming one. Home lost its meaning, family became an equally vague expression. After the first fifty frantic calls from Lorelai when Dean couldn't find her and she didn't return on her own, Rory sent Lorelai a text, begging her mother not to call unless it was a matter of life and death. Since then, she had talked to Lorelai all of five times on the phone, four of them only because Lorelai had called from someone else's phone. After the last call, she switched off her phone, and didn't switch it on until a week later to show she meant business. She ignored calls from her grandmother. Emily would never understand, could never understand. Emily had never had a Jess in her life, she was satisfied with the life she lived.

Instead, she left a trail of postcards in their wake. Not that she ever signed them "Rory and Jess". After the first five ones, she didn't even bother signing her name at the bottom, just a simple _"I'm fine. Don't call"_. Nevertheless, she dutifully wrote from every new town, trying to explain, and apologize. When that didn't work, she just relayed stories from places they'd been. She never left a return address. Over time, however, her postcards grew more and more succinct, her words became plain and impersonal. No more stories, apologies or explanations. Just bland words on bland cards.

Other times, it all made sense. They were where they were for a reason;_ The Reason_. So broken, both of them, dysfunctional and detached, living for whatever they could find beyond the horizon. They were there, they were now, they were every epic couple and individual ever depicted in the great art of literature. Upon entering a new town, they left behind Rory and Jess, and became their favorite characters for the entire stay, picking up Rory and Jess as they left. She played a convincing Dominique in Raleigh, while he (not too surprisingly) was the perfect Holden Caulfield in Kansas City.

Her three boxes of random stuff finally came in handy, when they stopped at a flea market somewhere in Louisiana. Rory had snickered as she picked out things they could get a good bargain for. Emily would so not approve. A nice woman with bright red hair paid 5 bucks for the bracelet Dean had made for her. Rory had no idea how the bracelet had made its way to Yale in the first place, but all things considered, it felt good to get rid of it. To her doubting mind, this was another sign. This was meant to be.

Utopia can only last for so long. The straight road that led them into the sundown became smaller, bumpier, and she started sleeping in the passenger seat, while Jess took the backseat. Rory missed home, but hated the thought of going back. July was slowly slipping away, and their trip still didn't seem to have no destination. Anything that was more than 100 miles away from the Connecticut stateline was fair game. At times the aimlessness felt natural, the destination was never the important thing, it was the two of them. Other times... she wanted nothing more than a goal for the day, something to take away the edge and confirm that they were actually travelling, not blindly running away from something.

They fought, vehemently, and she frequently slammed doors shut, cursing Jess for dragging her away from her life. He yelled at her to go home if that's what she wanted. So she did. She began walking, not knowing if she was even going in the right direction, because Jess had refused to buy a map in Ohio. It was endearing, but she kept the little anecdote about Lorelai's refusal to look at a map when they ran away from her wedding to Max, to herself.

She walked, each step growing heavier with regret. But turning around had never been her kind of thing. Quitting was not in the Rory Gilmore internal lexicon. At least not most of the time. Maybe she should go home, what good had this done her? Jess was clearly just as temperamental and geographically wayward as ever. As she walked, she thought about whether or not she had actually believed him when he told her that he had changed, or if she ran away just because of the desperation in his voice, the underlying need for the two of them to be together, for however short a while it might be.

Jess picked her up half a mile later, and everything was fine for another 100 miles. It seemed to be their limit for how much time they could spend with each other before they needed to blow off steam. Hurried kisses in the backseat only did so much. As far as patterns go, this was one they both felt comfortable with. It was safe, it was predictably unpredictable, and they could move on.

Other times, they just broke. Jess would fight against some unnamed evil in his dreams, he would wake up screaming and only lie down when she stopped begging him to tell her what was wrong. He would let her run her fingers through his hair, and say everything would be okay. They both knew she lied. Neither of them cared.

They turned homeward after a stint in Philadelphia, or rather, Rory turned homeward. It was her turn to fall apart. She got the Call. Sookie told her in hushed tones that Richard had passed away from another heart attack. Lorelai wouldn't leave the house, Emily would not speak to anyone. Rory had to grab hold of the table she was sitting at so her world wouldn't crumble. _But it did_.

She broke down that night, and it was Jess's turn to soothe her, and feed her lies about the world getting better. She packed up the few belongings she had next morning and left for home. She left behind Jess and the nice little impasse they had had. It had been nice while it lasted, but it had only been an impasse. There was no higher meaning or purpose to the Great American Roadtrip, just a bunch of fantasies to hide behind. Truth, reality, life... One or the other, or maybe all three, would catch up to you.

Her entire body was a jittery mess as she took the train home, spending her last money on a bus ticket to Stars Hollow from Hartford. The bus driver recognized her from her Chilton days. Time had stood still in that particular bus, or so it seemed. She wondered if that would be the case with Stars Hollow.

When she got off the bus and carefully looked around, she found that her little hometown looked ordinary enough, but its people looked at her differently. Rory couldn't decide if they had changed, or if it was her. The whispers of the gossip mill followed her all the way to the Dragonfly, where they were muted into a silence that was almost electrical. Michel was as unhelpful as always. Sookie said Lorelai had not been to work since she got the news.

With an ever-growing unease, Rory took the backroads home, avoiding the open streets and the wary eyes. When she emerged from the shrubbery at the Crap Shack she gasped. The yard had not been tended to for weeks, maybe months. Not that it had been a wonder before she left, but at least then, the lawn got mowed. Inside, the house smelled of multiple failed culinary experiments and old take out. No Lorelai in sight. The door to Rory's room was shut, plastered with her postcards, tacked to the door in chronological order. She set down her bag in the livingroom, and quietly ascended the stairs. She cringed with each squeak, and half-expected her mother to come running everytime, but no one came.

Upstairs, the door to Lorelai's room was slightly ajar. No sound came from inside the room, and at first, Rory thought that maybe her mother was sleeping, but if that was the case, there would be telltale sounds: the bed creaking, Lorelai's light snores. Fear gripped Rory. Was Lorelai dead? No longer caring about the noises she made, she hurried to the door and swung it open with force, holding her breath all the while.

Lorelai was not dead, not in the way Rory had feared. Her mother lay in bed, curled up under blankets, clutching something in her hand. The eyes were vacant, they hardly even registered Rory entering.

"Mom..?" Rory said, her voice quivering.

No answer, but the eyes quickly darted to her and fixed on her.

"Mom, I'm... I'm home."

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**A/N**: Next chapter will be from Lorelai's POV (mostly...). Until then, leave a review pretty please..!


	2. Chapter 2: Home

**A/N**: Thank you so much for the reviews! Immediately after I had posted I was sort of overwhelmed with the feeling that this was the crappiest piece of writing I had ever posted. Luckily, by the time I had almost convinced myself to remove it, I had already turned off my computer, so saved by the off-switch there, I guess... As mentioned, this will be from Lorelai's POV, sort of. You'll know what I mean. Enjoy.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Gilmore Girls and I am not making any money off this.

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Chapter two: Home

_You'll be the vein, you'll be the pain  
You'll be the scar  
You'll be the road rolling below the wheels of a car  
And all of those thoughts on God  
Don't know if I'm strong enough now  
You'll be the vein, you'll be the pain  
You'll be the catalyst_

_- Anna Nalick_

Lorelai didn't say anything, didn't move an inch. It was like a dream, a beautiful, distrubing dream. A surreal, Rory-looking postcard coming to taunt her and tease her until she found the will-power to tack it to the door next to the other ones. She wondered if, now that her world had finally crashed into too many pieces to collect, she would be able to find enough power to get out of bed.

This time, she'd painted herself a pretty convincing prodigal daughter. Ratty, dishevelled hair, sunkissed skin, worn jeans and that t-shirt Rory had borrowed from her ages ago. Would she ever have the heart to wear it if she ever got it back? (and she wasn't saying she'd get it back. Hell, she wasn't sure she'd ever get Rory back, not with that... boy driving)

"I told her," Lorelai thought to herself, as she looked at the Rory-mirage. "I told her, if she wanted to throw away her life for a boy, he'd better have a motorcycle..."

She'd dreamed up these scenarios for weeks. Rory coming home, saying it was all a mistake, that Jess was a finished chapter (or maybe even finished permanently), that everything would be fine. She had called and called, only to be asked not to call. She had fallen to pieces with every postcard, and still desperately held onto it, because it was the only contact she'd had with her daughter. Lorelai thought she'd done everything humanly possible, but it had taken her father, Rory's beloved grandfather, dying for her to say she'd come home. Maybe that had been a dream too? A delusion she had plunged into and gotten stuck in because the wound from reality was still raw on her soul.

This must be it. She had finally lost touch with reality, she was no longer tip-toeing around earth, she had really taken off. A solitary tear rolled down her cheek.

"Go away..." Her whisper barely carried, but she was sure the hallucination would hear it and leave her alone. No use haunting those who have lost their mind.

In a blink, the Rory that wasn't Rory was by her side, the bed squeaking in protest as she shimmied her way onto it and embraced Lorelai.

"Mom, come back... Are you sick, you want me to call anyone? Should I call Luke? Or Sookie?"

Luke. She hadn't seen Luke in... a while. She could no longer recall how long ago it was since she had last seen him. There had been yelling, blaming and a whole lot of bitterness. She made coffee at home, vats and vats of coffee to go, but they tasted as bitter as her falling out with Luke. She tried making her own danish, her own burger, even tried to play bagel hockey on her own, but it all turned into nothing, trash to feed the overflowing cans outside.

Sookie kept things up and running at the inn. She would come over with papers to sign, real food, and sympathy. Lorelai signed the papers, put the food away until it went bad and disregarded the sympathy. It was only salt in wounds that just wouldn't close because the postcards always cut them open when they had just begun healing. Sookie had been the one to tell her she had called Rory, and that Rory would come home. She figured even Sookie had realized that futile hope and the make believe versions of reality that followed, however temporary, was better than nothing.

"I'm calling Luke," the Rory-hallucination said resolutely, when Lorelai wouldn't answer. Another blink, and she was gone.

_Finally_.

Lorelai let out a shaky breath, buried her face in the cover, and tightened her grip on the ball point pen she had snitched from Richard's office during the office party. He'd caught her, but only snickered at her, too satisfied about bagging the Swede to tell her off. It had been their little, trivial secret, and it had been nice. The pen had been the first and hereunto the only thing she'd found that had belonged to her father. She knew it was stalling the inevitable, but that pen just made him seem... less gone.

The house had fallen quiet again, or at least quiet enough that she believed she was all alone. Solitude was her new safety zone, what had she ever needed people for? They either left her, were disappointed by her or yelled at her. Second by second, she drifted into solitude, that blessed zone between asleep and awake. It didn't last long.

Downstairs, the door slammed open, and an unmistakeably gruff voice called out.

"Lorelai! Lorelai!"

The voice was jarring, and it pulled her mercilessly out of her lull. Luke? What was Luke doing here? Then she remembered. This was a hallucination. This was not real. She had lost it. Still, she heard hurried voices coming from the living room, followed by heavy footsteps up the stairs and loud thuds just outside her door. Her door opened.

"Lorelai? Lorelai, are you all right?"

The smell of fresh coffee teased her nostrils. Involuntarily, her eyes refocused and found Luke's worried face in the fog._ "Funny,"_ she thought. She had never been able to duplicate the smell of fresh brewed coffee from Luke's even in her wildest imagination. That could only mean... This was _real_. Luke was in her house, in her room, with coffee. Someone had called Luke over. The Rory-mirage wasn't an illusion. Rory... Lorelai sat upright, dropping the pen.

"Rory!" she cried out, her voice breaking after staying silent for so long. "Rory!"

Luke took a step back, watching baffled, as tears began trickling down Lorelai's face. Behind him Rory came tiptoeing up the stairs.

"Mom?"

Lorelai heard the soft sound of feet as well, and turned to face the door. And there she was. Ratty, dishevelled hair, sunkissed skin, worn jeans and the top she had borrowed long ago. She wasn't Rory, and she was Rory. The eyes, the blue that couldn't be changed by anything, glowed with joy as her daughter threw herself at Lorelai. They got tangled in each other, and were soon an inseparable entity, sobbing and laughing and mumbling words that could not be heard. Luke smiled. He could come back later. He put down the steaming coffee on Lorelai's bedside table and snuck out. She'd call him. He just knew it.

During the first weeks after Rory had left, Lorelai had tried to imagine what she would say to Rory when and if she came home. Mostly, she had wanted to yell at her daughter, then hunt down Jess and do unspeakably foul and evil things to him for taking her daughter away from her. But as it turned out, she wasn't angry. She couldn't be, not when Rory had finally come home. She just couldn't yell, couldn't give Rory reason to leave again. And Jess... Well, so long as he didn't darken her doorstep anytime soon, he'd be safe.

She patiently listened to Rory telling the unabridged, unembellished story of her stint on the road. Part of her understood. She'd be lying if she'd say her and Christopher hadn't at least fantasized about it when they were young. Packing up their stuff (possibly nicking some of Emily's more valuable items and sell them for one third of what they were worth), leaving on Christopher's motorbike, not knowing where they would end up.

"So... You and Jess, huh?"

"Yeah..."

"Did you hide him in the bathroom?" Lorelai inquired, trying to hide her curiosity and worry behind jokes.

"No! No, he... He stayed in Philadelphia," Rory replied evasively.

"He stayed?"

"Yes."

"In Philly?"

"The one and only."

"Are you guys..? Is it..? I mean... You know..."

"We have issues. There's no denying it."

"I could've..." Lorelai bit her lip. Her inner screamed at her not to finish that sentence.

"I know," Rory said pointedly. "He knows. Everyone knows, okay? We like each other, but we're volatile when we're together, and as soon as we try to be apart things just fall to pieces. We just need to hash things out."

"Hash it out?"

"I know he wants me back at Yale. I know I would like to be back at Yale, but it's not something you want to admit to the person you've been quasi-Thelma and Louise-ing it with all summer."

"Was there a Brad Pitt somewhere?"

"No." Rory couldn't resist smiling. Brad Pitt. That would've been a sight.

"So, are you gonna call him?"

Her silence made Lorelai freeze inside. No. No, no, no, no. And still... _yes_. She knew it herself. A phone call was a crappy way to end things, any kind of thing, really.

"You need to go back to him, don't you?"

"Just to talk!" Rory hastened to say. "I won't go until after grandpa's funeral, and I will come back, I promise!"

Rory meant it, it was no doubt about it. Lorelai knew her daughter, knew what every facial expression and every inflection of her voice meant. And they were telling her Rory would come back.

Days and weeks went by. The funeral passed in a haze of tears and piles of "I'm sorry for your loss" as Richard Gilmore was laid to his final rest. Rory took Emily-duty for the entire day, staying near her grandmother for support and to run interference if needed. Emily hadn't quite forgiven her, but she knew better than to show it publicly. As Lorelai watched them, she wondered if she would ever learn to fully tolerate her mother's behavior.

Inevitably, the day came when Rory left for Philadelphia. She'd called Jess to let him know she was on her way. He was camping out with a couple of guys he'd met, _"Complete nutjobs, don't say I didn't warn you"_, and he'd come pick her up at the train station. She was gone for a week, and Lorelai had to tell herself over and over again that her daughter had returned, that she would return again. She passed time taking down the postcards from Rory's door, putting them in a box. Her friendship with Luke resumed. He'd bring her coffee, they'd sit not talking to each other. It wasn't exactly comfortable silence, but it was a silence that said everything. She let him see the postcards before she tossed them into the cupboard, along with her Max-box and Rory's Dean-box.

When Rory finally returned, part of Lorelai wished that Rory's reckless nature had had enough, that this summer had satiated its hunger and restored her to her former glory. She asked about the trip to Philadelphia, Rory answered in clipped sentences. It wasn't over, but it wasn't continuing either. The Call had left this unfamiliar state hanging inbetween them. He had admitted he perhaps wasn't as ready as he thought he'd been. She had told him she wanted to go back to Yale, he'd said he'd figured as much, and that he was proud of her going back. They left things resolved and unresolved, shelved for a time when they could sit down and start picking through the racing months of that summer. This would take time.

It did.

Years later, at a publishing house in Philadelphia where Jess had begun working just months after their previous meeting, they finally realized that there had been a reason for their running. There was, after all, a higher meaning to the Great American Roadtrip. It was a step on the way to something that wasn't necessarily waiting for them at the next stateline.

After that conversation, Lorelai finally asked Rory why she had left. They had avoided the question, but when everything else was said, the "why" still hung in the air. Her daughter explained, retelling the meeting with Jess. It wasn't something they could boil down to just one simple thing, one event that set the rest in motion. Sometimes, things just happen, they collude, and then jump you and you're so taken by surprise that you'd rather run away than face the problem. Sometimes, there wasn't only one catalyst. Sometimes, there was a whole horde of them.

And for all that fear and running away, they had finally brought both Rory and Jess _home_.

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**A/N**: That's a wrap, people! This is what my mind threw at me when I asked for Twilight. I know things were left hanging, but that's the way it came to me: open, so that everyone is free to infer and hope and guess. I hope you liked it, and that you will drop a review.


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